Search Results for: JPMorgan

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: March 31, 2015 Last Friday and again yesterday, the Vice Chairman of the Federal Reserve, Stanley Fischer, delivered speeches that attempted to refocus his audience away from the systemic global risk posed by behemoth Wall Street banks and redirect their gaze to dangers lurking in the nonbank sector: things like mutual funds and hedge funds. Reading the speeches, we had an epiphany here at Wall Street On Parade: if something does blow up in the nonbank sector it is highly likely to be caused by an interaction with a Wall Street bank. The insurance company, AIG, would not have failed during the last financial crisis had it not agreed to engage in Credit Default Swaps (CDS) with Wall Street mega banks. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac would not have failed had they not been seduced into buying dodgy mortgages,  mortgage-backed securities, and derivatives from … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: March 19, 2015 Hillary Clinton just can’t catch a break. As her self-inflicted imbroglio over erasing 30,000 emails involving her time as Secretary of State continues to command press attention, the April issue of Harper’s Magazine is focusing gasp-worthy attention on the “loan-sharking” business that Bill Clinton, as President, assisted in transforming into the too-big-to-fail Citigroup that played a leading role in bringing the country to the brink of financial collapse in 2008. Janet Yellen’s Fed can’t be too happy either about the revelations. The Fed just gave Citigroup a clean bill of health last week under its so-called rigorous stress tests and is allowing the bank to spend like a drunken sailor, raising its dividend 400 percent with permission to buy back as much as $7.8 billion of its own stock. The Fed’s qualitative portion of the stress test is said to look at both risk … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: March 11, 2015 Results of the first leg of this year’s Federal Reserve stress tests, which measured capital adequacy of 31 of the most systemically important banks under a hypothetical market crash and deep recession, were released on March 5. Every institution passed that phase of the tests. At 4:30 p.m. today, the Federal Reserve will release its findings on the second leg of the tests: risk management capability, corporate governance and internal controls. Wall Street calls this element the “culture” test. For those who have been reading our columns since 2008, when the culture of Wall Street brought about the greatest U.S. economic collapse since the Great Depression of the 1930s, you might be thinking that the Fed’s concern over the culture on Wall Street is a day late and $14 trillion short. (The $14 trillion figure is the amount of secret loans … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: March 5, 2015 The Partnership for Civil Justice Fund (PCJF) has a slogan: “The constitution won’t defend itself.” Today, the dedicated attorneys that battle for the little guy at PCJF must be thinking – “the constitution won’t be defended by flip-flopping judges either.” PCJF finds itself in a uniquely bizarre situation. Two prominent judges with brain-trust status on the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, which is based in Manhattan, have overturned their own decision that they handed down just six months ago. That’s strange enough but what really has tongues wagging in legal circles is that they reversed themselves with no party asking them for a rehearing. The case had been accepted for an en banc (full court) hearing at the Second Circuit when the two suddenly reversed themselves. The case involves Occupy Wall Street – the largest protest movement against Wall Street bankers’ pillaging of the … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: March 4, 2015 Yesterday, the Senate Banking Committee held the first of its hearings on widespread demands to reform the Federal Reserve to make it more transparent and accountable. Senator Elizabeth Warren put her finger on the pulse of the growing public outrage over how the Federal Reserve conducts much of its operations in secret and appears to frequently succumb to the desires of Wall Street to the detriment of the public interest. Warren addressed the secret loans that the Fed made to Wall Street during the financial crisis as follows: “During the financial crisis, Congress bailed out the big banks with hundreds of billions of dollars in taxpayer money; and that’s a lot of money. But the biggest money for the biggest banks was never voted on by Congress. Instead, between 2007 and 2009, the Fed provided over $13 trillion in emergency lending … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: March 3, 2015  On December 20, 2007, Bear Stearns held a conference call with analysts to review its fourth quarter earnings. During the call, the company revealed that “For the full fiscal year, the company repurchased 12 million shares of common stock at an aggregate cost of $1.7 billion.” Less than three months later, the company collapsed. On June 13, 2008, Michael Rapoport of Dow Jones Newswires wrote that Lehman Brothers had reported “in its most recent quarterly report in April that it had repurchased about $765 million worth of its stock during its fiscal first quarter, at an average price of $59.05 a share. That includes some shares tendered by employees as payment when exercising stock options.” Three months after Rapoport wrote those words, Lehman collapsed into bankruptcy, its shares effectively worthless. Then there was Merrill Lynch, the century old iconic retail brokerage … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: March 2, 2015  Fed Chairman Janet Yellen fielded questions last Wednesday before a combative House Financial Services Committee. Tempers flared, fingers stabbed the air, arms waved wildly as House reps expressed pent up frustrations with how the Federal Reserve is handling the economy. At times, Yellen answered curtly and at one point rolled her eyes at questioning from Congressman Scott Garrett (R-NJ) who insinuated that Yellen had politicized her office by meeting so frequently with President Obama and Treasury Secretary Jack Lew. The anger and frustration were evident from both sides of the aisle. Congressman Michael Capuano, (D-MA), was incensed that the largest, most dangerous Wall Street banks are still being allowed to fail their living wills. Capuano read a portion of a statement from FDIC Vice Chair, Thomas Hoenig, which stated that these living wills “provide no credible or clear path through bankruptcy … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: February 26, 2015 The Republicans are making good on their campaign pledge to turn up the heat on the Federal Reserve. Sparks flew in the House Financial Services Committee hearing room yesterday as Fed Chair Janet Yellen appeared to present her semi-annual testimony. At times, the exchanges between Yellen and Republican members of the Committee were sharp and tense. In his opening statement to the Committee, Jeb Hensarling (R-Tx), who chairs the Committee, blamed the “anemic” recovery on Obamacare, Dodd-Frank and regulatory costs. He went on to say that “Then there’s the doubt, uncertainty and regulatory burden that grows as more and more unbridled, discretionary authority is given to unaccountable government agencies.  Although monetary policy cannot remedy this, it can help.” Republicans are locked in some kind of mind warp where the remedy for every problem is to deregulate. Despite six years of books, … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: February 25, 2015 Two major stories have broken this week showing how little has actually changed under the much heralded financial reform legislation known as Dodd-Frank. That legislation was enacted in 2010 with the promise of ending the unchecked corruption, conflicts of interest and casino capitalism that crashed the U.S. financial system in 2008, leading to the largest taxpayer bailout in the nation’s history. Yesterday, in a front page article, the New York Times used data to back up the withering conflicts of interests of SEC Chair Mary Jo White – the same conflicts that Wall Street On Parade reported two years ago. (See related articles below.) The Times reported that because Mary Jo White had worked for a major Wall Street powerhouse law firm immediately preceding her term at the SEC, representing major Wall Street firms like JPMorgan Chase, she had recused herself … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: February 17, 2015 Last Thursday, the Office of Financial Research (OFR), part of the Federal boondoggle created under the Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation in 2010 to foster the illusion that the government was reining in risk on Wall Street, released a new study showing almost unfathomable levels of systemic and interconnected risk among the too-big-to-fail banks that cratered the U.S. financial system in 2008 and has left our economy still struggling to right itself. Authored by Meraj Allahrakha, Paul Glasserman, and H. Peyton Young, the report reconfirms to Americans that nothing significant has been accomplished in the last six years to prevent casino capitalism on Wall Street from crashing our financial system and the U.S. economy again. The report found that five U.S. banks had high contagion index values — Citigroup, JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, and Goldman Sachs. The authors write: “…the … Continue reading →